English

A Protocol for Spectroscopists to Isolate The Effect of Berry Geometric Magnetic Forces on Molecular Dynamics

Chemical Physics 2020-08-25 v1

Abstract

We propose a novel means to isolate and quantify the effects of Berry force on molecular dynamics using two reasonably strong continuous wave (CW) laser fields with frequencies ω\omega and 2ω2\omega. For molecules or materials with three frequency-matching bright transitions (01|{0}\rangle\rightarrow|{1}\rangle, 12|{1}\rangle\rightarrow|{2}\rangle, 02|{0}\rangle\rightarrow|{2}\rangle) at frequencies (ω\omega, ω\omega, 2ω2\omega) respectively, the effects of Berry curvature can be isolated by varying the phase between the two laser fields (Δϕ\Delta \phi) and monitoring the dynamics. Moreover, we find that the resulting chemical dynamics can depend critically on the sign of Δϕ\Delta \phi; in other words, the effects of Berry curvature can be enormous. Thus, this manuscript represents an unusual step forward towards using light-matter interactions to affect chemical dynamics, suggesting that topological concepts usually invoked in adiabatic quantum optics and condensed matter can be directly applied to non-adiabatic chemical excited state dynamics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.09752,
  title  = {A Protocol for Spectroscopists to Isolate The Effect of Berry Geometric Magnetic Forces on Molecular Dynamics},
  author = {Zeyu Zhou and Joseph E. Subotnik and Hsing-Ta Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.09752},
  year   = {2020}
}